Your best bet for help is to only make changes made and reply about add'l
problems before making those changes!!!

Everyone is trying to help but only do what is suggested. Do not proceed w/o
psoting new problems and waiting for assisstance before maiking changes!!

Are working with only one computer? OR are yuo putting bad drive in a
different computer?

The bad "C" drive is primary master with jumper set as master and is Only HD
in computer?

You had ntldr and ntdetect.com and a boot.ini file with entries that yuo
provided.
You booted up. You received an error message. You should have stopped and
reposted problem!!

You said at one time bad drive would boot normally but not in safe mode?
Is that still true?

"geezer" wrote:

> On Sat, 3 Dec 2005 14:51:09 -0000, "John Barnett MVP"
> <freelanceit@mvps.org.NOSPAM> wrote:
>
> >Geezer, visit my website http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org Click the Win XP
> >Faq button and take a look at question 10 'How do i create an emergency
> >start up disk for XP' You will need a floppy disk for this. Once you have
> >created the floppy disk reboot your computer with the floppy in the floppy
> >drive. If all goes well you should be able to boot to the windows desktop.
> >If the emergency floppy has booted to the desktop then go to Windows
> >explorer and click on the floppy drive. The contents of the floppy disk will
> >become visible (you must have 'show hidden files and folder, etc enabled
> >otherwise you will not be bale to see the boot.ini file (see question 11 on
> >my site). Now copy the contents - boot.ini. NTDetect, NTLDR from the floppy
> >to your C: drive and then reboot again. Hopefully, assuming the floppy
> >worked, this should repair the problem and you should be able to boot as
> >normal.
>
>
> Thanks
> You sound very knowledgable and your site is one to keep accessible on
> this end.
>
> I tried what it says to do, which really is to grab the 'ntldr' and
> ntdetect.com files from the hard drive - then create a new boot.ini
> file with content
> [boot loader]
> timeout=30
> Default= multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows [operating
> systems]
> multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows="Windo ws XP"
>
> I can find no ntldr or ntdetect file. Remember I have my skeleton
> drive as c drive and the bad drive as d drive. Both have what look to
> be valid XP structures. I looked (searched) on both drives. Yes, I
> have view set to see hidden & system files.
>
> However, I did find the 2 files on my XP installation CD. So I used
> them to make the so-called emergency startup diskette.
>
> With the bad drive as c drive, and the only drive, I booted up from
> the floppy. It told me that a so-called 'hal.dll' file is missing or
> corrupt. I copied that file from my skeleton XP drive, and placed it
> on both the floppy and in the bad drive's c:\windows\system32 (which
> was a 'replace'). I re booted from the floppy again, with only the
> bad drive in place (as c drive), and I get the same error.
>
> What now?
> Thanks again
> Geezer
>